Barbara Luderowski (January 26, 1930 – May 30, 2018) was an American artist and museum administrator, who founded the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania[1] and served as the museum's president and co-director.[2]
With her ten-year-old daughter, Luderowski moved to Pittsburgh from Birmingham, Michigan around 1972, and decided to buy a condemned home after taking a tour of the city's North Side.[3] In 1975 she purchased an empty six-story factory in the Central Northside, where mattresses had been manufactured at the turn of the 20th century. She immediately moved in, and from the beginning envisioned the building as a place where she could work on her own sculpture while sharing studio space and conversation with other artists.[4] Luderowski founded the namesake Mattress Factory museum in 1977, dedicating it to site-specific installation art, much of it by artists in residence. Although Mattress Factory installations change regularly, with some 650 different artists showing installation and performance pieces over its nearly 40-year history,[5] permanent exhibits include important works by Yayoi Kusama and Greer Lankton, as well as three installations by James Turrell.[4]
Luderowski owned several properties around the Mattress Factory, which she donated to both local and internationally-known artists and curators for projects.[2] She lived (with museum co-director Michael Olijnyk, also an artist) in a two-story loft-like apartment at the top of the original Mattress Factory building.[6]